April Fools' Day Bomb
by Twilight Joltik
Summary: Ness doesn't particularly like April Fools' Day at the Smash Mansion, especially since the Smashers are notorious for playing cruel jokes. Of course, perhaps his cynical nature on this day isn't for the best, considering he can't take a miracle as anything but a cruel joke until it practically hits him in the face. One-shot to commemorate Lucas getting back in Smash.


_**AN- You know, I don't really like April Fools' Day, but between the Nintendo Direct and the new Sbemail, I have nothing to complain about on this one. In fact, it so exceeded my expectations that I wrote a one-shot about it. So, I own nothing but my own ideas, thank you, and enjoy! –Twilight Joltik**_

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_April Fools' Day Bomb_

_By Twilight Joltik_

Ness had always sort of enjoyed April Fools' Day back home. His little sister would always replace his toothpaste with frosting and fill his cookies with toothpaste, and in return, he'd wake up early to draw on her face with marker. At school, the lies kids would tell were too outrageous to even believe, so he could always just laugh along with them.

At the Smash Mansion, however, April Fools' Day was just cruel. Jokes weren't harmless, they were at best mean-spirited and at worst sadistic. He'd been on the receiving end of far too many of Peach's Poison Mushroom pies to think the holiday was harmless fun anymore. And even then, he'd seen far worse happen to others. Marth had been given false news of Roy's return as a cruel joke one year, and on another Falco and Fox had decided to tell Pit they could fix his wings, only to simply paint them a bright chartreuse. Really, this childish holiday had turned toxic in other's hands.

Still, while Lucas had been there, he had somewhat enjoyed the holiday, in a way. Lucas had told him that in the Nowhere Islands, they had had a similar holiday where they stuck paper fishes to one another's backs, so the two had done the same. The other Smashers had found it anything from mildly amusing to childish and silly, but they had enjoyed the simple joy of waiting to see if someone would notice it.

Of course, Lucas was gone now, and it felt wrong to celebrate that holiday without him. Therefore, this April Fools' Day was back to being a cruel holiday, even more so than it had been in the past because he knew exactly the joy he was missing out on.

He'd hoped in vain the day would be forgotten. The moment he got up to get breakfast, he knew that wasn't the case, as the first thing he saw was several hundred pictures of various Smashers with mocking captions printed on them taped up all over the halls. Link's CD-I self, Captain Falcon doing various Falcon things, Ike and Shulk with their associated catchphrases, the latter being in his swim trunks in every single picture, Bad Boxart Megaman, a blue scribble with "Come on, step it up!" printed in a speech bubble by it, and so on. Almost every Smasher had at least one mocking poster, except Palutena, oddly enough.

Well, at least it wasn't anything worse than that so far, Ness thought, praying it wouldn't get worse. As he entered the dining room, he noticed Peach offering slices of her traditional April Fools' Pie to Lucina and Dark Pit, making him feel rather obliged to cry out "Stop, that's not apple, it's Poison Mushroom!"

Lucina, who had the slice halfway to her mouth, quickly put it back on Peach's platter and cast a death glare at the princess, while Dark Pit spit it out instantaneously. The Mushroom Princess gave a pouty frown. "Aw, come on Ness, they're newcomers! They need to experience the holiday for themselves! You're ruining the fun."

Looking away from Peach, Ness simply continued to walk towards the breakfast selection while Lucina called after him "Thank you for helping us!". He would have turned back and told her he was glad to help if Pit hadn't chosen that moment to come up to him.

"Happy April Fools' Day-icus!", he greeted. "Nice job saving Pittoo-icus. He would have probably found a way to blame me-icus for being turned tiny for the next hour-icus!"

The angel chuckled with every instance of his odd verbal tick, and Ness let out a sigh. "So, is this your prank for the year?"

"Yeah-icus!", Pit exlclaimed brightly. "I tried to get Mega Man-icus to do something too-icus, but he didn't want to-icus."

"Are you gonna talk like that all day?"

"That's the plan-icus!"

Ness hadn't even eaten yet and he was already sick of the holiday. That was a new record. He dismissed Pit and went to the food bar and grabbed some mildly okay sausage and biscuits and poured a glass of orange juice. Of course, when he bit into his breakfast, he found it had been spiked with a significant amount of hot sauce, and the orange juice was in fact carrot juice. Neither thing sounded in the least appetizing to him, so he began seriously regretting not following through on the plan that had flitted through his mind a few days prior to keep food hidden in his room for emergencies related to this day. Instead, he forced down the food with a grimace, his distaste for the day growing stronger by the bite and more bitter by the gulp.

He decided after that to just wait the chaos out until the day was over in his room, but was promptly thwarted in that plan. It seemed someone had locked his door from the inside, and he was left with two explanations for this. The first being that his roommate had locked him out, but considering Pikachu lacked opposable thumbs, this seemed unlikely. The second was that someone had climbed in a window and locked the door, which also seemed unlikely given that his room was on the second floor, but at least more plausible than the first.

So, therefore he decided he'd follow his pranker's example and climb through his window as well. He ran at full speed outside through the poster-filled hallway, accidentally knocking one down of Pit with buzzard wings and trampling it to shreds . However, he quickly encountered a problem: he had no clue which window was his own. From the angle he was standing at, he couldn't see inside any of them, and even if he could, his room was so plainly decorated that it would be impossible to distinguish from any other.

As he looked up and debated strategies, he thought he felt someone tap him on the shoulder, but when he turned around, no one was there. Paranoia was already getting the best of him and it wasn't even noon. With a sigh, he realized this would be a very long day. He continued to try to figure out if he could perhaps count the windows without risking going back inside to double-check his room's distance from the sides through all the festive chaos until he heard a voice break through his thoughts.

"Hey, kid, thought you might want to know, that blond guy- what was it, Luke or something?- from your series's back," Dark Pit told him complacently.

Ness felt his insides boil with rage. That was a cruel trick, and had he not seen Marth be subjected to it before, he might have fallen for it. "That's not funny," he told the angel. "And his name's Lucas."

An annoyed sigh came from Dark Pit, and footsteps padded away from him. "Fine," called the clone angel. "Don't believe me, see if I care."

It was much harder to concentrate on the windows after that. The whole holiday, it was like it was trying to spite him! Ness just continued to stare the windows down until he finally decided to use PK Thunder to shoot himself up there to see if he could get a good look at the rooms from above, even for a minute, but as he was starting to charge it, he was scared by a low chuckle from beside him.

"Have you heard?", questioned Shiek in her normal eerily unheralded manner. "Your friend has returned from the Nowhere Isles."

Casting a sideways glare at the ninja, he simply scoffed, and Shiek sighed as she walked off. Really, Ness thought, he hadn't expected that from her. She had always seemed nice and quiet, even if she was completely perplexing in her independent existence from Zelda.

He focused back on the windows and began to charge PK Thunder once more. Carefully, he aimed the ball of light to hit his body and send him flying towards the windows. Really, he should have known that was a terrible idea from the onset, and hit a brick wall with his face rather hard.

Next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the ground, and his face stung with the fury of a thousand Star Uppercuts. Shakily, he got to his feet and sighed. That had been stupid, and he figured he should probably just quit while he was ahead. However, before he could go back inside, a small pink puffball jumped in front of him, bearing a huge smile.

"Ness!", Kirby exclaimed. "Did ya hear? Lucas is back!"

Of all people, Ness had never thought Kirby would be so cruel. King Dedede, perhaps, and even Meta Knight if he was a bit hyped up on sugar, but never the sweet little marshmallow. "Shut up!", Ness shouted. "This isn't funny, any of you! Lucas isn't coming back, not now, not ever, and it would be really nice if you all stopped rubbing it in, okay?"

Really, he didn't care that he heard Kirby bawling as he stalked inside. He was just sick of the whole holiday, and fully ready to bust down his own door if it just meant a bit of peace and quiet. Perhaps his anger had consumed him a bit too much, as while he was making his way through the joke-filled halls, Rosalina called out to him, and he automatically snapped. "I don't want to hear about Lucas!", he yelled, and Rosalina simply gave him an astonished stare for a moment.

"I was only going to tell you there is something on your back," she stated with a few wide-eyed blinks before walking off.

Almost without thinking, Ness reached around to find something taped to his back. A small, familiar-looking crude drawing of a fish had been placed there, and an astonished gasp came to his lips. It looked so much like the ones Lucas had drawn it could only have been his handiwork. He wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or touched some other Smasher had saved his work to reuse on him.

Even that small piece of his friend was enough to let him ignore his irritation as he carefully stepped through the hallways, avoiding the banana peels so carefully set out by Diddy Kong as to most likely trip someone up. Rounding the corner to his room, he spotted someone in front of his door, fiddling annoyedly with the handle in frustration.

His first thought was that his eyes were playing tricks on him, and his second was that someone had either disguised themselves as his friend or used magic to conjure up an illusion of him. Both suspicions were dashed as Lucas seemed to hear his footsteps approaching and turned to give him a bright, subtle smile that could have belonged to no one else.

"Ness!", his dear friend called out. "I'm so sorry I left like that, something came up at home and-"

Without a second thought, Ness cut him off by running in for a hug, but completely forgot about the banana peels and ended up crashing into Lucas instead. "I-It's fine!", Ness assured him after he regained his footing. His eyes were getting mistier with every second he spent taking in his friend's presence. He looked just the same, and so very alive and whole and present that it made the past months of sadness melt away. "I'm so glad you're back! But, maybe next time actually say hello instead of taping a fish to my back."

Lucas looked down and blushed. "S-sorry," he stammered. "I just thought it m-might be funny. That was k-kind of mean of me."

"It's fine. It was funny, actually." Ness didn't want to see his friend frown, not when he had just returned. "I think I need to apologize to a few people. They told me you were here, but I didn't believe them and sort of lashed out."

A bright laugh made him forget the guilt that had come over him from being so rude. "Oh, I can't believe it either! Now, let's find a way to get this door open and I'll get my stuff back in there, okay?"

After several minutes of trying to pick the lock, they'd ended up unleashing a PK Flash-PK Freeze combo on the poor door, only to find Pikachu cowering on the foot of what had once been and would now once more be Lucas's bed. The Pokémon cheered up considerably upon seeing Lucas return, and Ness could sense it had hid in there because Mewtwo had also returned on that day. How he had locked the door was another April Fools' miracle, Ness supposed.

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_**AN- Lucas is back. Just let that sink in for a moment. I think I squeed loud enough to break glass upon realizing the DLC reveal trailer was meant for him. Of course, I'd been hoping it was Roy, but Lucas is just as good, if not better. Besides, with the new voting thing, we can bring back our boy Roy, so there is hope yet! So, thank you for reading! –Twilight Joltik**_

_**PS, the title is a reference to an item in Mother 3 called the "New Year's Eve Bomb", which was used to defeat the Porky Statue. Figured it was fitting. And the whole paper fish thing is a French April Fools' Day tradition, which I thought would be fitting considering Lucas is a French name.**_


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